There has never been a time in history when simply being pregnant and giving birth has seemed so complicated. This is because there has never been a time in history when being a woman has seemed so complicated. Whatever gains we imagine we have made in work, in relationships and in the wider culture, the struggle to find a positive definition of what it is to be a woman, particularly in regard to our reproductive lives, is as intense as ever. Nowhere is that struggle felt as keenly as in the arena of pregnancy and birth

Pat Thomas

It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though she is still forbidden to resort to physics and chemistry.

H.L. Menchen

Pregnancy demonstrates the deterministic character of womanís sexuality. Every pregnant woman has body and self taken over by a chthonian force beyond her control. In the welcome pregnancy, this is a happy sacrifice. But in the unwanted one, initated by rape or misadventure, it is a horror. Such unfortunate women look directly into natureís heart of darkness. For a fetus is a benign tumor, a vampire who steals in order to live. The so-called miracle of birth is nature getting her own way

Love and respect woman. Look to her not only for comfort, but for strength and inspiration and the doubling of your intellectual and moral powers. Blot out from your mind any idea of superiority; you have none.